Zalando has reported an increase in net income of 121.5 percent to €60.0 million for the past year. Operating earnings (Ebit) grew by 131 percent to €207 million. Excluding extraordinary items, they rose by 101 percent to €216.3 million, resulting in an adjusted Ebit margin of 5.9 percent for the year compared with 3.6 percent in 2015. The progress was partly due to decreases in marketing costs of 1.4 percentage points to 10.3 percent of sales and in fulfillment costs of 2.6 percentage points to 23.2 percent of sales.
Total revenues went up by 23.0 percent to €3.64 billion in 2016, indicating a relative slowdown from the previous year's growth of nearly 34 percent. In particular, sales in the German-speaking countries had risen by 28 percent in 2015, but in 2016 they increased by only 14.8 percent to €1.81 billion, including an 18 percent increase in Germany to €1.22 billion. The Ebit margin in the German-speaking area more than doubled to 12.2 percent from 6.4 percent.
Zalando reached a turnover of €1.57 billion in the rest of Europe, growing by nearly 30 percent last year after an increase of 40.5 percent in 2015. The Ebit margin improved in the region by 0.1 percentage points to a still negative level of 0.2 percent.
The total number of active customers rose by 10.9 percent to 19.9 million. They placed 69.2 million orders with Zalando, 25.2 percent more than in the previous year, spending on average €66.60 per transaction. Customers placed 65.6 percent of their orders through mobile devices, up from 57.1 percent.
For 2017, the Berlin-based e-tailer expects its growth to continue in the range of 20 to 25 percent, but the operating margin should remain stable at between 5 and 6 percent. It plans to add 2,000 jobs to its year-end staff of 11,998, more than 1,600 of whom work in its technology team. Investments of around €200 million are planned for this year, compared with €181.7 million in 2016, covering primarily infrastructures, automation and software development.
